How to Land a 100K/yr Tech Job - 10 Strategies

meet bob bob is an exceptionally average guy who currently works in the taco bell industry he's got some programming skills he learned on youtube but has no connections no social media following no college degree and no trending apps on the app store for some reason he wants to work in the tech industry where he can stare at a computer screen for 10 hours per day googling how to get his code to work in today's video we'll look at 10 powerful strategies that can help you and bob land a six figure job by the end of 2022 and i give you my 100 money back guarantee all i ask is that you like the video and subscribe and give me 10 of your salary before we get started i want to point out that i've been working independently for about a decade so to make this video i reached out to a few different hiring managers both at big mega corporations and startups to figure out what the decision makers are actually looking for especially when hiring a self-taught programmer with no prior experience as of today the job market is likely stronger than it's ever been before there's all kinds of stories of people quitting their jobs in the great resignation only to land a much higher paying job because there's a massive shortage of talent that spans across many industries it's really weird and i've never seen anything like this before it's great if you're looking for a new job but there may be some warning signs on the horizon many of the top publicly traded tech companies have seen their stock prices quietly crash over the last few months companies like twilio and cloudflare are down 50 from their highs of last year a lot of big money is moving out of profitless tech companies and generally that's not a good sign for tech jobs but that's just a short-term concern over the long term i think tech is one of the safest and best places you could possibly work the first thing you'll need is the right attitude getting a high paying job in tech is hard there's a lot of overly optimistic marketing bs out there that might make you think you just go to a boot camp for a few weeks and immediately after you're making a hundred thousand dollars there are some success stories that go like that but for the most part it's a very difficult grind that requires you to be highly motivated and highly persistent to put things in perspective lambda school who recently changed its name to the bloom institute of technology i wonder why they did that charges 22 000 in tuition but guarantees a job earning 50 000 after you graduate that's about what a taco bell manager makes what they teach you is the same stuff you can learn here on youtube but they support you by making you hirable the same thing i'm trying to teach you on youtube for free right now now if you don't get a job after the program they will refund 110 of the tuition however in order to qualify for that you'll need to spend a year applying to 10 jobs per week reaching out to 10 professionals for networking and making at least five github contributions that means you'll need to apply to at least 520 jobs and be rejected from every single one they know it's a grind and you should have the same mindset when going into it yourself independently but on the bright side it's definitely achievable if you work hard at it and accept the fact that you're probably going to have to face a lot of rejection before you finally do land a job i'd recommend subscribing to the dorian develops youtube channel who has a recent video about his story about landing a job as a self-taught programmer it took him about a year now let's move on to strategy 2. live in the united states specifically in new york city the bay area or seattle in the 2021 stack overflow survey the median salary for engineers is well below 100k in the united states though it jumps up to about 130k a few weeks ago i posted a poll on this channel that has a 150 000 responses yet only 11 percent are making more than 100k sadly where you live really does make a big difference so keep your expectations in line with your region now the key to getting hired is to make yourself valuable think of it from the eyes of the employer why would they actually want to hire you what value would you add to the team to the product to the company etc most tech companies don't actually make any money but the general idea of employment is that the employer can make a profit off of your labor the question becomes how do we make you desirable to these potential employers there are many things you can start doing today in strategy three we'll look at twitter there's a whole subculture out there called tech twitter and i've seen tons of people land a job simply by adding value to this tech twitter community there's a pretty simple formula for growing a twitter account to get started follow the influential people that you want to be hired by then create a profile that's totally transparent that you're on a journey to land your first job in tech then you can start responding to other people's tweets with encouragement and positivity people will think hey bob's a really nice guy i want to see him succeed and i'm going to follow him to watch it happen from there you need to hack the out of the twitter algorithm whenever you learn something new post a thread about it if you have any good code tips use carbon to create a snippet and post it with a bunch of emojis you'll also want to create lists with resources for developers like the best youtube channels to learn programming and make sure you put fireship as number one it also helps to tweet out open-ended questions and to come up with your own memes the majority of my twitter growth has been the result of memes if you're serious you should be tweeting every single day like multiple times per day one account i followed tweets an average of 37 times per day which generates an average of 277 new followers per day you don't need to be that prolific but just try to be consistent more importantly though don't screw things up by saying something like if you tweet out man my code is being right now somebody with a lot of followers who thinks they're a lot more important than they really are might call you out and then everybody will dog pile on you and at that point your journey into tech will be over before it started now that you know how twitter works let's move into strategy four linkedin there are tons of recruiters on linkedin who can help you get a job in tech but remember bob doesn't have any connections in tech yet so how does he even get started with linkedin well the first thing you can do is find people you look up to and send them a message that you're looking to get into tech and that you would like to connect most humans are actually pretty nice and will connect with you no problem feel free to make me your first connection if you'd like also join groups for the different technologies that you're interested in and participate in them if possible you can also build your network by posting content you can actually just reuse the content you've been using for threads on twitter and post it to linkedin now that you have your linkedin network going we can talk about the most important social site in github as a self-taught programmer it's very important that you at least have something going on in your github in a perfect world you have commits every single day not only to your own project but to many other open source projects out there that's not very realistic but it's important to be consistent and that's exactly why lambda school or bloom institute of technology requires that you make five github contributions per week to an employer it shows that you're capable of writing code every day which tends to be a pretty important part of the job if you're just getting started one of the easiest ways to contribute is to look for typos in the documentation fireship io for example is open source and you can find all kinds of typos in it if you fix it and send a pull request you can easily add that contribution to your timeline as you start using more open source libraries don't be afraid to open issues when you find problems and if you want to contribute look for issues that are tagged with good first issue it is true that you're kind of working for free here but doing so will make your github profile much stronger and it's just great experience as a developer in fact if you don't have fun doing this kind of stuff then maybe a career as a software engineer isn't the best career path now that your github is impressive it's time to build a personal project because bob is a developer that nobody knows he needs to show employers that he can actually build something that's non-trivial ideally something that will blow people's minds that cannot be ignored you are much better off having one really awesome app than 10 mediocre apps quality is much better than quantity when it comes to your portfolio the engineering manager who hires you is likely a much better programmer than you are they'll be able to tell if your portfolio is filled with a bunch of cookie cutter projects recreated from tutorials on youtube give yourself three to six months to build something that is truly impressive one example is the portfolio of bruno simon he used 3js to build an interactive 3d landscape to showcase his work the reaction from other developers should be something like wow that would not be an easy app to pull off it's so good that i want to include it in my youtube video building an app is one thing but the next strategy is to build this app in public what i mean by that is you should transparently document the entire process while you spend the next few months building something awesome the most common way to do that is by blogging there are many sites out there like dev2 and medium to create your own blog easily but i would highly recommend blogging on your own custom built site in my opinion a custom site expresses more passion about the craft of web development in addition to blogging you'll also want to be documenting the process on linkedin and twitter and you may even consider starting your own youtube channel building in public is extremely powerful because it creates a feedback loop you don't otherwise get when you're just working alone in your mom's basement there's a whole community of startups who are building in public you should give them feedback on their products and in return they'll do the same to make your project better in fact you might even consider monetizing your project because if you build something really good you might end up accidentally creating a job for yourself one example of a success story is superhuman an email application that charges thirty dollars per month that was built in public they got tons of great feedback from potential customers while building the product and you can do the same thing with your personal brand while looking for a job now we can move into strategy eight real life networking where you actually have to like look at people's faces and say words to them and stuff as an introvert this has never come easy for me but what i can tell you is that some of the best business contacts i have come from real life interactions believe it or not zoom or the metaverse doesn't replace the magic of face-to-face human interaction i'm here live that's not i'm not a cat the pandemic has ruined this in a lot of ways but traditionally the best way to meet people locally is through meetups all you have to do is find your local programming meetup show up there and eat some free pizza and maybe you'll meet someone important that can help you down the road now the other thing i'd recommend is attending conferences it's more expensive but a lot of hiring managers and employees attend these things and they're often looking for people to hire who are interested in their tech stack learning the basic skill of introducing yourself and making small talk can go a really long way when it comes to landing a job you just have to get in a room with the right people they say it's not what you know but who you know speaking of which another powerful strategy is to get a mentor which is much easier to do when you make a real-life connection it might be a person with 20 years of experience or a person that's just one step ahead of you who just landed their first job it's extremely valuable to have a person in the industry who you can have an honest conversation with you're likely making many mistakes that you don't even realize having a mentor who can validate or criticize the things you're doing is much faster than actually making those mistakes and learning from them one by one most boot camps will give you a mentor and that's one of the main things you pay them for but you'd be surprised at how many people out there will mentor you for free because at one point they were in your shoes and people are more altruistic than you might think and that brings me to strategy number 10 be a good fit as you start applying for jobs you'll mostly hear crickets but if you're lucky you'll get a phone interview and then be rejected the next day the natural reaction here is to be sad and to feel worthless or you might be angry at the company or think the interviewer treated you unfairly but the reality is that rejection is just the story you tell yourself the best way to respond to it is accept it as part of life and selfishly see what you can gain from it maybe ask for feedback or guidance to help you do better next time what you'll notice about successful people is that they're persistent they fail over and over again without caring until finally something works now the other thing to keep in mind is that a company won't hire you based on your technical skill alone i mean it definitely helps but they also want to make sure that you fit into their company culture as a candidate they want you to embrace their core values and make sure that you'll fit into their management leadership style before you interview you should understand the company's core values and look at their social media profiles to see what kind of messaging they're putting out there make sure you align with their values unless you want to hate your job for the next 10 years and then try to mold yourself into the candidate that they're looking for i'd recommend also checking out danny thompson's youtube channel who has a short video that explains this really well in detail and with that you have 10 strategies that can help you land a job you don't need to use all of these but each one can get you a little bit closer to landing a six figure tech job in addition you'll also need to learn how to code and how to master the technical interview but don't worry i have upcoming videos on those topics as well make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss them thanks for watching and i will see you in the next one

Channel: Fireship

Views: 938,945

Keywords: webdev, app development, lesson, tutorial

Id: Xg9ihH15Uto

Length: 11min 17sec (677 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 20 2022